Year 18: Are we done with ore yet?

Never give up until the contract is done

We're a stubborn lot and we're going to get this Mun-ore contract done even if it kills us.

Let's do what we should have done in the first place, and that's test the landing here on Kerbin first. It's convenient that the VAB lets you fill the ore canisters before launch. Let's see if adding landing legs helps things.

I'm letting Mitrid and Elul fly things so they can build up some experience. They don't seem to be enjoying the whole process.

That's not supposed to happen! I attached the booster to the wrong attachment point it seems.

Let's try this again. OK this might work:

Nope, complete unplanned disassembly. Let's redesign things.

Let's put the ore around the edge instead of on top, and use some heftier parachutes.

Success! Not sure why we were running all these tests at night.

Let's put this on a real booster and head to the Mun! About ready to launch when.. wait... why did the contract manager just blink. What???? Contract complete??? But we haven't launched yet??? Did they finally finish scraping all the Mun rocks off the mountainside from our last attempt? Urgh. Well we build this rocket, we're going to get that ore back contract or not.

And, we separated poorly and lost our transfer engine. Sigh.

At least we got to test to see how well the new design handles a sea landing.

We launched *again* and this time made it to the Mun. We managed to land in a deep hole though. Ghost Daphty managed to get to us anyway, and promptly knocked us over while trying to dock.

We couldn't right ourselves, so we had to take off from our side. That wasn't too bad, and we actually overflew Tranquility Base before finally landing upright again.

Daphty very slowly managed to get back to us. Why is it so slow? Oh look we have two flat tires. Oops. And then right about this time the sun went down and we lost all power so we have to wait for Munar morning.

In the meantime, it's still the Duna window so we thought we might actually try to do a crew rotation and bring some of the inhabitants of Ike Station Zebu home.

Let's go recruit a pilot from the astronaut center and... wait. No pilots at all? I guess we're going to have a robot probe.

Here it goes! I wonder who will get there first, this probe or the new Ike base.

Morning on the Mun! We sent enginer Madchell for a walk so she could fix the tires.

Then it was time to dock. Madchell and ghost-Daphty have a lot of fun in the rover.

We quickly (well actually it was pretty tedious going) transferred the ore and fuel over, backed up, and got ready for launch. First though collecting some science.

So long Mun, hopefully we won't be back for a while.

Re-entry going OK:

We made it! A little low in the water with all that ore, but we recovered it all! Time-warp contract complete!

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